I HAVE SEEN A GREAT LIGHT

While laying awake in bed last night listening to my hubby snore, he has been sick a few days and so we have been home for a few days, I was tortured in my thoughts as I lay there. Being in Chronic pain and my ability to be mobile becoming less and less a fact of life, I laid in bed with worry and fret over what lays ahead in the future for me, it wasn't comforting to say the least. I feared how I was going to make it, what if my hubby died before me? what was I to do then, how was I going to be able to live in my home when I am not able to do the things as I use to, in fact my hubby has been taking up the slack,because I am almost unable to do alot of what I use to do, so what then? I laid there thinking I had no hope for a good outcome. I even thought of taking my life if that fear came to pass. Then I thought about God and how within Christianity, only a few will make it into God's paradise the rest would either live on in eternal torment or God will cast them in to the fire after Judgement never to be remembered again. I thought about how it would be at that time with this theology. God raises from the dead all the mass of humanity who were either non believers or never have heard of Christ, so God will wake them up only to judge them and then either kill them or torture them. How in God's name can anyone justify that ? I am thinking to self, why even wake them up if God is only to kill them again? How stupid and cruel is that ? Listen for a moment, why bother to even wake the unbelievers up in the first place, if they all don't make it then let them be dead and gone and over with it, what is the cruel purpose to raise the condemned in the first place if there is no hope for them in doing so? Is this a cruel joke being played out, if so I don't want this cruel beast of a god. If they are condemned and with no hope then for God's sakes leave them be!!!But they are raised and for what other purpose? But yet the Christians who believe in annihilation believe that is exactly what God will do. Or God awakens them only to judge them  guilty and then throw them into the fire and the Second Death only so they will be consciously alive and be tortured through out all time for what they did or did not do in their extremely short life time compared with the final verdict of torture for all time.  Can any one see the mercy, justice and love of God in that picture? Not me.

Some different thoughts came to my mind as I was fretting over this theology  of eternal death or eternal torture ,that the many in Christianity believe and teach. Who was right? who are wrong? Can I ever know?What is the truth here?
Consider this story/parable: You have a wealthy man that has all the money and power in the world and then you have all the rest of us who do not . All of us in time ,owe this man many thousands of dollars , we are indebted to this wealthy man to the extreme. Then one day this wealthy man's son comes along and pays off all of our debts. No one now owes this man's wealthy father anything whatsoever. But only a few find out that this was done, they find out they no longer are indebted to the wealthy man and are now able to live life without fear of slavery or prison or death because they can not pay  or can ever get out of this indebtedness to the Wealthy man. So now after being told the good news that their debt has been paid in full by the Wealthy man's son, they are now able to live  the rest of their lives  full of gratitude , thanksgiving and love towards this wealthy man's son for all he did for them, he literally saved their lives. Now the rest of the people which are many never hear the good news of their debt being paid in full, their lives continue as it has been,  full of fear, and worry, and hatred towards the wealthy man's power over them and their indebtedness to him. They live their lives and die without ever hearing the good news  that their indebtedness has been paid in full. My question to you is this, even though they have no clue that their debt is paid in full, do they still owe the wealthy man ?Are they still in debt to this Wealthy man even though the Wealthy man's son paid it off? So in like thought, Christ paid the debt and died for our sins and the death that it produced in us , for ALL of humankind from Adam to whomever at the very last day He died for All, God is no longer attributing sin to us, we do not owe the sin debt any longer, that debt has been paid in full, the good news  is that the Son has cleared us from all sin and the eternal death it produced!
The truth is this that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation."(2 Corinthians 5:18-19) We Christians have been given the ministry of reconciliation. The whole world is God's. And it is entrusted to us to tell others this Good News so that they can in this life live it with out fear or shame or guilt! So that they can be truly thankful and full of gratitude and joy towards God.

The modern Christian concept of hell is not only unbiblical, but the fact of the matter is that it is straight from the devil himself and blasphemes the marvelous sacrifice Christ made on the cross of cavalry. The bible defines hell as separation from God. If you don't know God, or have a personal walk with Him, my brother and sister, you are in hell,  and can ir not get any darker in darkness than that. You walk in darkness no matter how you may look by the world's standards.  This is truth,if you don't have a personal relationship/communion with your creator, you are in hell, and are the  walking dead. The bible describes the situation of people that don't know God this way.

" ... ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:"(Eph 2:12) You have no hope and are without God in the world. That's hell, and your end is death.
But that is not the end of the story!

So as I laid there in bed last night God revealed to me in my spirit that He is in charge, and has been from the beginning, I need not fear, and that I have been given the GOOD NEWS in that God is NO LONGER IMPUTING SIN TO ME it has be taken care of by the work of Jesus Christ in his life and death and resurrection, it is a DONE DEAL, and I have been given this news so that I no longer must fear life here in hell,the darkness within me has been overcome by His true LIGHT !!!!!
"The truth hurts.", the truth kills. It kills the lies, it kills death. Understanding and truth will be used by God to destroy utterly darkness and lies. Love will be used to destroy hatred.

"This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all."(1 John 1:5) If you are darkness, and have lies, deception, murder, greed, jealousy, envy and hatred in you, you will be consumed by the light of God and have all truth revealed to you. The way to preserve your soul is to ask God to show you His truth in this life, because only then do you get rid of the garbage in you and get it replaced with truth. Then, with the truth, you have eternal life because only pure truth can stand before God and not be destroyed. Only when you have truth do you begin to be alive. People with no knowledge of God don't have eternal life because life itself begins with the knowledge of God. If you don't have God, you don't have any life at all according to the bible. When the man asked Jesus if he could first go back and bury his father before following Him, Jesus replied,
" Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead. "(Matt 8:22), meaning that those who are Spiritually dead are the same to God as those physically dead. The definition of eternal life is preserving your soul from this existence into the existence to come. If you have no life in this existence, you have no life to carry over into the next. The soul full of darkness will be destroyed, or the soul that sins shall surely die, by being filled with  God's light.

The bible declares in Isaiah 45:22 - 24

" Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I [am] God, and [there is] none else. I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth [in] righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. Surely, shall [one] say, in the LORD have I righteousness and strength: [even] to him shall [men] come; and all that are incensed against him shall be ashamed." The end of all the earth is to see Jesus and bow their knees and confess that He is Lord, to the Glory of God. There will not be a  forced show of worship here by some big angel pushing them down to their knees . They will bow and worship God because they will have the truth revealed to them.
Listen the only reason Christians are in the earth today is to show the world what their future is. We are the first-fruits. Not just the early church but all of us as Christians are just one church, always has been and always will be. The church of Jesus Christ. We Christians today are just as much part of the church as the apostles were at the beginning of all this. The church is the first fruits along with Jesus for the church is His body. First is never used unless there is a second. We are in the earth to be an example. James 1:18 says,
" Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures."

All the earth belongs to God and everything in it. The Good News we are to bring to this world is that God has sent His Son to be the sacrifice for the world. God has reconciled the world to Himself and your end is determined. You will go stand before God. Wait, you say. What about the verses which say those that have done evil will be cast into the lake of fire? Well I will leave that for next time. I just want to make it clear that most of us are all ready in Hell, here on the 3rd rock from the sun, many of us are tortured by our thoughts and our fears and our worries, already. The fear of a future Hell is nothing compared to the Hell most of us face or see each day, most of us with out Christ are already dead,dead, dead, and there is no life in us. Don't threaten me with a future hell, I have experienced that already, but praise God I have seen a great light in Jesus Christ and now I am saved from this life of death in this hell here in this life. I was dead and now I am alive for it was not Christ alone who died on that Cross, but I and every person did too, but the joy is that I know I was buried with him already and I am raised with him already and the life I now live I live by the power of His life in me , amen and halleluyah!

shalom in Christ.

WHEN HELL FREEZES OVER

"Why does there even have to be a Hell? Why can’t God just make those He hates disappear? The answer is simple: if he did that, then there would be no incentive to follow his law, and the evil would get off the hook ..."—

I read this statement off of some Christian site and I found that I just could not let this statement go without some comment on it.
How can any so called Christian believe that hell is an incentive to be good or to believe in Jesus? If a Christian is only a Christian because he or she is afraid of Hell, then my friend they have missed the point. The bible states that we love God because God loved us first, we love God because God loves us as we are, but love us so much that He will not let us remain as we are when we come to Him through His Son Jesus Christ, who I might add is the only door way to God.
Is prison an incentive for people to be good and obey the law? So far I have not found that to be the case . Prisons are so full now that they are having trouble enough trying to find places to put the criminals. The death penalty , is it an incentive for people not to commit murder? So far it has not done a good job of it.
Do Christians really believe there is in fact a Hell as described by Hell fire preachers and the Catholic church? If people truly believed in this fallacy they would be knocking down the doors of every person trying to convince them of their fate. This my friend is not happening.Hell as we have been taught does not exist . PERIOD!!
No one is in Hell now, no one has been judged yet, no one is being punished after they have died, in fire and brimstone now .What kind of God do they worship any way? A God that hideous who will torture people before the Judgement day, and a God that will torture all who refuse to believe in Him for all eternity, is frankly not the God of the Bible, PERIOD.
""Hell" Is Not an Old Testament doctrine:
Popular myth : Hell is an established Biblical doctrine that is in the Bible from start to finish. This is not true! Two thirds of the Bible (the Old Testament) does not mention Hell at all. ("Sheol," the Old Testament word that is sometimes translated as Hell, only means "grave" by definition, and it is where everyone in the Old Testament went when they died--good or evil, Jew or Gentile). Thus the Old Testament does not contain the concept of Hell!
Think about it...
If Hell is real, why didn't God make that warning plain right at the beginning of the Bible? God said the penalty for eating of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was death- -not "eternal life" in fire and brimstone.
If Hell is real, why wasn't Cain warned about it, or Sodom and Gomorrah , or any of those who committed the earliest recorded "sins?"
If Hell is real why didn't Moses warn about this fate in the Ten Commandments or the Mosaic Covenant consisting of over 600 laws, ordinances, and warnings? The Mosaic Law simply stated blessings and cursings in this lifetime.
If Hell is real, why are its roots in paganism, rather than the Bible? Many nations surrounding Israel in the Old Testament believed in Hell-like punishment in the afterlife, for they served bloodthirsty and evil "gods," while Israel simply taught the grave (sheol) and a hope of a resurrection. If Hell is real, why was the revelation of it first given to pagan nations, instead of God's covenant people? Did God expect Israel to learn about the afterlife from the Pagan Gentiles? If so, why did He repeatedly warn Israel to not learn of their ways?
If Hell is real, why did God tell the Jews that burning their children alive in the fire to the false god Molech, (in the valley of Gehenna ) was so detestable to Him? God said that such a thing "never even entered His mind" (Jer. 32:35). How could God say such a thing to Israel , if He has plans to burn alive a good majority of His own creation in a spiritual and eternal Gehenna of His own making?
**FACT: The King James Bible erroneously translates the word "Sheol" as Hell a total of 31 times in the Old Testament, thus setting a foundation for that doctrine in the New Testament as well as the majority of Bible translations to follow the KJV. Even so, most new translations have completely eliminated Hell from the Old Testament, as honest and better scholarship has demanded. The Jewish version of the Old Testament (the Tanakh) has no concept of Hell in it. The importance of this fact cannot be over-emphasized. If a doctrine does not appear as seed form in the books of the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms, it cannot fairly be taught as a major biblical doctrine, if indeed it can be taught as biblical at all! Hell Is Not a New Testament Doctrine:
Popular myth: Jesus spoke of Hell more than He did of Heaven. This is not true! Jesus warned the Jews many times of impending destruction, both nationally and individually. He used several different terms to refer to punishment/destruction, some of which were erroneously translated as the same word, "Hell" by Bible translators. I do not deny that God will indeed judge the whole world, nor do I wish to make light of His judgments. I am challenging the belief that His judgment on sin and unbelief is eternal torment/Hell and never-ending punishing . Certainly, Jesus spent a lot of his ministry warning people to repent or reap the consequences, (particularly "Gehenna.") But could we be reading more into His warnings than He originally intended?
Since the concept of Hell doesn't exist in the Old Testament, how could Jesus and his disciples teach that salvation was deliverance from a place that is not even found in their Scriptures? And if He was introducing the subject for the first time, why did He do it so casually, as though His listeners already understood what He was talking about? If Hell is real how could the Apostle Paul (who was especially commissioned by God to preach the gospel to the nations) say that he had declared the entire counsel of God (Acts 20:27), when indeed he never warned of "Hell" in any of his letters? If Hell is real, wouldn't Paul, of all people, warn of it repeatedly?
Hell Contradicts The Work of the Messiah:
Popular myth: Jesus came to save the sinner from his destination of everlasting Hell. Not exactly true! Hell was never a place that the Jews were hoping to be saved from, since they didn't even believe in it! But they did need to be saved from their sins and consequences of them; namely death. Jesus came as the Anointed One to fulfill all of God's plan for the earth-that through Him might come the salvation, deliverance of sin, peace, kingdom of God and all that God had promised through the Old Testament scriptures.

Traditional teaching among Christians is that the benefits of Christ's sacrifice are only available to those who believe. "God doesn't send people to hell -- people send themselves to hell by choosing to reject the Christ's loving sacrifice on their behalf." Or to paraphrase C. S. Lewis, "hell is the place for people who get what they want -- and what they want is a life apart from God."
(Quoting from HELL FIRE, A Twisted Truth Untangled, by Joe Crews) "There are two extreme views in current circulation concerning the punishment of the wicked. One is Universalism, which contends that God is too good to allow anyone to be lost. The other is the awful doctrine of endless torment which would perpetuate for all eternity a dark abyss of anguish and suffering. Both are wrong. The truth lies in between. God will punish the wicked according to their works, but He will not immortalized evil in the process" by keeping evil men and women alive forever. How many truly honest souls have been turned away from God because of their revulsion at this misinterpretation of His character? They cannot love someone who would ... keep evil people in endless torment with no purpose in view. ... Only a vindictive spirit of revenge could be served by such an unspeakable arrangement We know from Scripture that God is not like that. He is a God of Love (but also a God of righteousness and judgment). The Bible tells us that pain and death will be done away with, along with the old earth and heavens.

If Hell is a place that the unbelievers go and are tormented for ever then we have to conclude that the bible must be wrong for it states that both death and Hell will be destroyed, so how can people be in hell forever?
Death and hell will not be immortalized forever. They will cease to exist when they are destroyed in the lake of fire. The last enemy that will be abolished is death. (1 Corinthians 15: 26) Then death and Hell were thrown into the Lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. (Revelation 20: 14) Finally, this is when hell truly freezes over.
Of all that Jesus taught about hell, the most important thing is that Jesus is the solution to the problem. In him, there is no condemnation (Romans 8:1). He is the way, the truth and the life eternal.The bible states very plainly what the punishment of sin is, and that is DEATH. "The soul that sins IT shall die."Ezekiel 18 is not really a tough chapter at all to the person who understands the difference between eternal life and physical life. When God said through Ezekiel that "the soul that sins shall die" (vv. 13, 18, 20), He meant just that. That is, the more one sins, the more one comes under God's judgment and the more likely it is that he or she will die. This same principle is restated in the New Testament as well (e.g.,James 1:15, 21). The wages of sin is death. While the believer escapes the eternal death which is part of sin's wages, the believer does not escape temporal death which comes from sin.
For the following 1,000 years,After Jesus the Messiah returns, God’s government will be administered across the world, bringing peace and prosperity for all (Isa. 9:7). Then will come the second resurrection, in which every man, woman and child who has ever lived—but who had not yet received an opportunity for salvation—will be brought back to physical existence (Ezek. 37:5; Rev. 20:12-13). All will be given a chance to learn God’s way of life and to overcome the way of sin. Those who do will be given the precious opportunity to change to immortality. Those who chose not to will not be given eternal life. My belief is that most will choose life.

TIME AND ETERNITY, AND JUDGEMENT FROM THE BOOK IS HELL ETERNAL OR WILL GOD'S PLAN FAIL BY CHARLES PRIDGEON

Here are a few tidbits from the book titled below that I agree with .

Is Hell Eternal?Or Will God's Plan Fail By Charles Pridgeon
TIME AND ETERNITY
"Time" is always a relative term; "eternity," in any accurate sense, is always absolute. The difficulty is increased by popular speech. "Eternity" is used for time that does not end, but this is incorrect.
There is no word in the whole Bible that can be accurately and consistently translated "endless time." Time not only implies temporary, but also implies the realm of the phenomenal.
All time will one day be converted into eternity. Time is allied to motion; eternity to rest. Time is made up of successive moments. The quality of eternity is its simultaneousness. Eternity is the opposite of time. It signifies a new state of things, a different condition; it denotes timelessness, that is, the absence of time. Time is the revolving circumference of a circle. Eternity is the fixt and unchanging center.
Hell/Hades
The Hadean/Hades state is the state into which the departed pass immediately upon death and there remain till the resurrection. It is, therefore, frequently spoken of as the Intermediate State.
Many theologians seem to teach that we immediately receive all God has for us when we die. The full harvest of both joy and suffering comes only after the Second Coming of the Lord. This does not derogate from the fact that Paradise is a blessed state, or that Tartarus is a place of suffering. We believe more than this; viz., that rewards and punishments begin in this life, that heaven and hell begin here. He alone can go to Paradise or heaven who has heaven begun in him and he alone can go to hell, Tartarus, or the Lake of Fire, who has hell begun here. The Intermediate, or Hadean state, will have more of both joy and suffering than we have in this life, but the fuller state, heavenly or hellish, will not come until after the resurrection. It is a source of great comfort to know that we never lose our identity in the Intermediate, or in any state.
Our Lord went and preached to the spirits in prison that were aforetime disobedient in the days Noah (1Pet. 3:18-29). He went after He was killed and was quickened in spirit. He greeted the repentant thief in Paradise, but it was especially in the Tartarus portion that He is said to have preached to the very same antediluvians who would not heed Noah's preaching.
Dives and Lazarus are represented as having preserved their identity and as knowing each other.
Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration were manifested from the Hadean state--their identity was preserved. Even the unsaved pass into the next life with the forces of their spirit which formed and made their body in this life. This spiritual body goes with them into the Hadean state, no matter how warped and dwarfed it may become. Each one that passes out of this life reaches the next life in exactly the same spiritual condition in which he was when he died. Death did nothing for him except to separate him from his earthly body. The intermediate state is for discipline, punishment, a process of judging, and for improvement, progress, and growth. There are those who without others will "not be made perfect" (Heb. 11:40); and there are others whose "spirits are made perfect" (Heb.12:23). Our Lord, after His death, was quickened in spirit and went and preached to those who were disobedient in the days of Noah (1Pet. 3:18-20); this is proof of conscious activity in the Hadean state.The suffering of the rich man in Tartarus had certainly done wonders for him. He probably had never been concerned about his "brothers" before. Now he is more than solicitous. It was more than earthly water that he thirsted for. He had no physical tongue. His thirst was spiritual, and only the spiritual water of life could satisfy him. He is not saved yet, but he is moving already in that direction. Of those who are righteous the Hadean state will be for them a time of further training, discipline and development. "He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:6). In place of the work of grace being finished God will carry it on till the Day of Christ and that day reaches not only to His coming but to the end of the ages. May we not pray as well as preach in the Intermediate state? Yes, and beyond, for our Lord still does both, and He is in the resurrected state. Our work will extend through all time. He "hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ; . . . That in the dispensation of the fulness of time He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth" (Eph. 1:3,10). God has called us to a magnificent service which will bring to us an ample discipline and a fuller glory.
When man fell it was a twofold fall. He fell into spiritual selfhood and he fell into an earthly nature. To get man back he has to die two deaths: he has to die to the natural and earthly and he has to die to self. If in this life man does not have these deaths wrought in him, then he enters the Hadean life with its judgments, discipline, training, and service. If man is still stubborn, there awaits him, and all such, the Lake of Fire and Brimstone, which is "the second death." The first death slew the natural and animal and took him into the Hadean state, and at its end, it and death, that is, all in Hades that have not repented are cast into the Lake of Fire where the process of the second death awaits, which is the death of all selfishness.
A Sane and Scriptural Doctrine of Punishment
The text, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap" (Gal. 6:7), contains many of the principles that obtain in a true doctrine of punishment. We will note some of these principles.
The Certainty of Punishment. One of the elements that makes punishment effective is its certainty. If a man thinks that there is a chance for him to escape the punishment for wrong doing, he may take that chance. Every one needs to learn that this law of certainty has no exceptions. There is no chance about it; what you sow, you reap. Every sin has its certain consequences. This is true even of the wrongdoer who thinks that he has escaped the working of this law. He is mistaken. The evil has already wrought damage to his character and one day its direful consequence will be manifest, unless divinely dealt with. Every offer of salvation; every presentation of more or new light; and every opportunity proffered, brings added responsibility. Every rejection increases guilt and multiplies the consequences as a punishment. From this law there is no escape. When this principle of punishment is understood, it furnishes one of the strongest deterrents to evil doing and also to the rejection of light.
The Limitations of Punishment. The harvest is limited by the quantity and character of the seed. Punishment is graded in proportion to light and opportunity. The law of justice will obtain. Some will be "beaten with few stripes" and some with "many." "And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more" (Luke 12:47,48). Punishment, as well as reward, is to be graded. A finite sin will have a finite punishment: nothing else would be justice. God Himself has set bounds to the consequences of evil, whereas to good there are practically no limitations.
The Kinds of Punishment. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," implies that the punishment will be of the same kind as the sins. Sins of the flesh bring forth consequences in the flesh. Sins of the mind beget mental suffering. Sins of the heart bring forth blasted affections and emotions. Sins of the spirit blight our highest nature on its Godward side. This law is certainly one of the harvest laws and is also in accord with the principles of justice. Jacob cheated his brother Esau, and he himself was deceived ten times (Gen. 31:41). Israel failed to keep God's law of the sabbaths and they reaped seventy years of captivity as a consequence (Jer. 17:27; 25:11; 2Chron. 36:20,21). When we think that every thought, word and deed will bring forth a harvest after its kind, we certainly need to take warning, to "flee from the wrath to come," and to bring forth "fruits of righteousness." The Author of Punishment. God is not the author of punishment, even tho He is over all and makes everything that happens serve His purposes in the government of His universe. It is the creature who is the author of sin and is thus responsible for its consequences. Sin has its origin in the creature's acting independently of God. God is not the author of anything that is evil. He never made any of the consequences of sin any more than He made the sin. God's creature is the only one to blame. God did not make a fallen nature. It resulted from the fall of angel and man. God never made a punishment for sin. Every punishment for sin is manufactured by the one committing the sin, "Whatsoever a man soweth." Our punishment springs from our own sowing. This consideration dispels all detraction in reference to God's character and Word. The place of punishment referred to in Matt. 25:41 as "prepared for the devil and his angels," may be better translated, "prepared by the devil and his angels." Wicked men share this punishment because their sins were similar to those of the evil angels, and they cooperated with the evil angels and followed their suggestions.
THE PURPOSE OF PUNISHMENT
1. He uses the punishment of sin as a preventive. This is for the breaker of His law, that he may be prevented from other infractions of it. God also has in mind the deterring of others who may learn or witness the terrible consequences of sin.
2. Punishment is also disciplinary. The root-meaning of one of the chief words for punishment is that of pruning. The Lord of the harvest never prunes to kill, but to help. The persistence of the consequences of sin long after the sin is forgiven by God is doubtless intended so to deepen and burn in the lesson that the cause of punishment may be cured. God purposes to establish in righteousness, that the creature, even if he could, would not yield to sin.
3. Punishment is also meant by God to be self-corrective. This is expressed in Jer. 2:19, "Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backsliding shall reprove thee." This still is disciplinary, but it implies that in the punishment itself is a self-corrective element. The fermentation of liquids tends to their own purification. The principle of the modern disposal plant is that one germ of impurity devours another till all their malignity is destroyed. God tells us what the harvest of sin is; "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23). This denotes all kinds of death, answering to the different kinds of sin. Sin always attempts to kill God. Its culmination was reached when it slew the Christ, but His death overcame "him (Satan) that had the power of death" (Heb. 2:14). And through our Lord's death all death has been potentially destroyed, and will be actually and historically destroyed before the end of the ages, when the Son hands over the kingdom to the Father: "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." God has thus limited the extent of the consequences of evil. It, in one sense, wears itself out. Let no one say however that Christ, the Savior, is not needed. We have already indicated that slaying Him only promoted His plan of redemption. It cut away all our nature of flesh and blood that He had taken, and in Him we and the whole creation were potentially set free from all corruption and all harvests that are the consequence of sin and sins. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8:2).This is a Sane and Scriptural Doctrine of Punishment. "For God hath shut them all up for unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all. O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor? Or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto Him again. For out of Him, and through Him, and unto Him, are all things: to whom be glory for the ages. Amen" (Rom. 11:32-36, literal).